Sew Solid Sunday #6

Welcome back to Sew Solid Sunday!  I hope you’ve had some fun with solid fabrics over the past month.

When I was at Quilt Market last month I had the opportunity to attend a session by Heather Jones about her new designs made from American Made Brand Solids.  These solid fabrics are all made and processed here in the United States!  American Made was kind enough to provide us all with a charm pack of the 50 colors they currently produce.  This month’s Sew Solid Sunday seemed the perfect opportunity to give them a try.

I started with my new notebook as inspiration.  That cover just screams quilt and charm pack.  Of course, I had to make a few changes, so I turned the design on its side, offset the charms and made the quilt a bit more asymmetrical than the notebook.  The American Made Brand charms were beautiful to work with.  I added some Kona Snow for the background and an unknown orange solid that I’ve had in my stash for a long time as the binding.

American Notebook

I’m calling my new quilt American Notebook.  It finishes at about 40″ square.  I cut the charms in half and sewed them together at random.  This is always a bit hard for me, but I did it!  I swear, I did NOT put them all on the design wall first as I’m so often tempted to do when working “randomly”.  I sewed some of the strips together, offsetting the charms and left two single strips.  This kind of design is perfect for solids – the colors just shine through!  Add some background, a lot of spiral quilting and there you are!

That spiral quilting is a bit tricky for the first few inches, but the effect is so worth it!  Thread decisions for a multi-colored quilt like this one can be a bit difficult for me since, in general, I prefer my quilting thread to match my quilt.  Clearly, that isn’t possible here so I chose a medium grey, Aurifil 2610, that I hoped would blend well and I think it did.

If you’d like to make your own version of American Notebook, I’ve provided some more detailed information after the linky party.

So what have you been working on?  Please don’t forget to link back to Sew Solid Sunday in your posts 🙂

 

American Notebook
Fabric requirements:

42 5″ charm squares
¾ yard background
½ yard binding
Cut the following background strips x WOF:
2½”, 4½”, 5″, 5½”, 7″
Cut 5 binding strips 2½” x WOF
 Quilt top:
  1.  Cut the charm squares in half.  Sew the halves together along the short ends
    at random to make 9 strips of 9 charms each.
  2. Set aside two strips as Units
    A and C.  On three of the remaining
    strips, cut 2¼” off one end and sew it back onto the other end.  These strips will be ¼” shorter than the
    others.  Trim the edges even after
    quilting.
  3. Beginning with a strip with full
    width charms and alternating with strips with half width charms at the ends,
    sew 3 charm strips together into Unit B.
    Sew 4 charm strips together into Unit D.
  4. Trim the selvages off the background
    strips.
  5. Sew the units together in the
    following order (left to right):
  • 4½” background strip
  • Charm strip Unit A
  • 5½” background strip
  • Charm strip Unit B
  • 7″ background strip
  • Charm strip Unit C
  • 2½” background strip
  • Charm strip Unit D
  • 5″ background strip
6.  Baste together with batting and backing.

7.  Quilt in a spiral quilt design or
as desired.

8.  Finish the quilt with the binding.

9.  Enjoy!
10 Comments
  • Rose
    Posted at 07:55h, 06 November Reply

    Beautiful and colours are gorgeous.

    Thanks,

    Rose

  • cpowell6664Carla Powell
    Posted at 18:40h, 09 March Reply

    I’ve just started working on this quilt. In instructions it says after the link party there’s more info.
    What’s the link party?

  • Linda F Fitzgerald
    Posted at 11:59h, 16 October Reply

    Love it! Great way to use my leftover solid strips

  • Judy
    Posted at 07:41h, 19 June Reply

    Love this quilt cant wait to try it

  • Nadine Medlin
    Posted at 15:30h, 10 January Reply

    Just ran across your quilt today (Jan.11,2016) and had to download it right away. It is going to be one of 2016’s quilts.

  • Anne
    Posted at 17:17h, 24 June Reply

    Didn't get it done in time for the link. Maybe next month.

  • Anne
    Posted at 15:38h, 10 June Reply

    Love your charm quilt Debbie. I find it very hard to sew randomly as you did on this one. I'm definitely a planner. Finishing up a all solid quilt right now that I hope to add to the link by end of week.

  • KittyAnnArt
    Posted at 03:31h, 09 June Reply

    Wonderful design, never know when or where inspiration for a quilt will show up! Thanks for the share!

  • Rachel
    Posted at 17:56h, 08 June Reply

    When you posted a picture of the notebook cover I was wondering how soon I would see a quilt in the pattern. You did not disappoint 🙂

  • Margaret
    Posted at 14:09h, 08 June Reply

    I love this! Your design inspiration is spot on – it really makes those colors shine, as does your spiral quilting, which is awesome! I've been wanting to give the American Made Solids a try and am happy to read your review. Thanks so much for sharing how you put this quilt together!

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